Letter to Family (Sent 9/26/2010)

Dear Family,

I realize a letter to all of you is long overdue as I look at the calendar in amazement, having to take a double take --- how the hell is it that a season can fly by so fast? Then I find myself pining for yesteryear, thinking to myself: will I ever be able to enjoy those vast swaths of time when Kai and Hana were in the pupa of their youth?" The answer is no, not for a long time. But then again war journalists and war photographers manage to write and reload cameras in foxholes and trenches, while bullets fly overhead. So, it is with that esprit de corps I type to you today, hunkered down, with laptop in the crossfire, letting the surrounding chaos unfold where it may. If you can't beat them...

Keeping up with Zippy and Zoomy is taxing enough to be sure, but with the addition of the swelt-n-melt summer heat, I soon find previously unimaginable thoughts at the forefront of my mind like, "what am I going to die now of a heart attack or heat stroke?" Yes, weatherwise, it certainly was some summer here on the Kantō Plain, in that the unrelenting heat hadn't let up until about two days ago. What better time to write.

I heard you guys were in the 90~100s well into September. How did you all fare in the Fahrenheit?

Well, let me fill you in on the haps of the past two months. I guess we left off with Kai & Hana suffering from mumps (boy that was no fun), the disease having pretty much succeeded in wiping out our July. Hana had it first then Kai and in the time between, Hana was able to participate in her school summer festival. Kai stayed home with Ba-ba with a face that resembled a sumo wrestler's and a temperature that rivaled that of the Heat Miser's. Mumps, which I've never had, is basically a week-long ordeal that saps both energy and appetite. Again, no fun for anyone.

Early August was when my break started, also marking the beginning of matsuri, or festival season. There are so many festivals that it is almost impossible to keep track; they are in every town across Japan, and in every neighborhood of every town. The air, both day and night, is filled with the smells and sounds of our sultry summer. Yatai, or food stalls dot the streets, selling okonomiyaki, roasted ginkgo nuts, takoyaki, yakisoba fried noodles (to name a few), the smells of which blend with the smell of hanabi fireworks, creating a unique combination of smells that inextricably link the past with the present. And through your ears, the relentless buzz of cicada by day is replaced by the faint sound of drums and flutes being played by night, as the countless processions of distant festivals march throughout the season and into your dreams.

Many an evening, after a long day at the beach, wearing more sand and sunscreen than clothing, and the smell of fireworks in hair, we shower in cold, a brief reprieve before the heat returns, then melting us into bed like grilled cheese sandwiches. Night sleeps are, to say the least, shallow, and circadian rhythms offbeat, necessitating midday naps. These naps often come involuntarily like a long walk through a poppy field, but can also be most blissful. They say that rice farmers would sow by moonlight and sleep by day --- I believe it.

Some questioned our choice of vacation destination, Singapore, wondering why we would go from one hot climate to an arguably hotter one. Well, the choice was easy. First of all, we would be staying in a swank, amenity-filled hotel where we could deny nature for as long as we chose. Secondly, there was so much to see. Singapore is chalk-filled with things to do for the family. In our 3-day stay we saw lots, visiting Little India, Sentosa Island, and the famed Night Safari, which was most memorable. Finally, though Singapore is a good distance from Japan (about 6 hours), there is no jet lag to deal with. Oh, of course, meeting our friends in Singapore gave the trip a nice personal touch. The Ahmad family used to live in Japan and Rozita Ahmad and her two girls, Meira and Zeti belonged to our Playgo bicultural group. Rozita and her girls were the best tour guides one visiting Singapore could ever hope to have. Singapore certainly lives up to its image: it is very clean, orderly, diverse and friendly. The population is primarily made up of Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Caucasians (in that order, I think), sharing one common language, "Singlish". Singapore English, or Singlish, as it is called, took about a day for me to adjust to. It's not as distinct as Indian English, or thick as say Irish or Scottish English; it's maybe somewhat close to Hawaiian English, but with more unfamiliar usages and colloquialisms.

Getting back to the Night Safari, let me just say this: Night Safari is wild! Kai and Hana thought it was quite cool to be out so late at night in an open zoo. The Night Safari opens after dark and stays open till about 11:30, during which time visitors can see nocturnal animals roaming and the whole zoo experience takes on Jurassic proportions as one's imagination fills in the dark spaces of night. Night Safari is like Disneyland's Jungle Cruise except the animals are real! Adding to the overall intrigue is the fact that there is an almost complete absence of fences and cages; in fact, I didn't see one fence, and the only cage we did see we were allowed to enter! And not just any ordinary cage, the bat cage! That was the coolest of cool. One of the bats I saw was no smaller than a Foster Farms chicken (see photo).

In the middle of August we took a quick jaunt to Sapporo, in Japan's northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, joining Miko on her flight there and back. We stayed the night, enjoying a seafood dinner, which is always a treat because the fish doesn't get fresher than in Hokkaido, where the ocean stays cold pretty much year round. Sapporo is a big city with a small town feel, making you feel at home the moment you land. Unlike our area, Hokkaido stays dry and a very hot day might be in only the high 80s. It was a short but refreshing trip to say the least.

Other highlights of summer include blueberry picking near Ninomiya at my friend's farm. After a full day of blueberry picking, Kagiyama-kun suggested that we climb Mt. Fuji later in the summer. Always up for an adventure --- albeit naively --- I agreed.

Just last week that's where you could have found me, gasping for air on the world's 35th most prominent peak. I thought I was going to die. The Kagiyama/Mike party became four, accommodating Kagiyama-kun's two friends, Yoneyama-san & Hamadi-kun. This was great because the more bodies the better in the event my body failed (cheaper than being airlifted off the mountain, I thought). Turns out Kagiyama's friends blazed up Fuji-san like nobody's business, seemingly in record time. I took my sweet time, taking a record (slow) time of 10 hours to summit. We started the hike at 1:00 AM from the 5th stage camp in a drive to be at the top to see the sunrise. We didn't make it. We got to about 9,000 feet when the sun emerged and even by that time we could see the curvature of the earth, so it was still quite a sight to see. And from this altitude, the formidable mountains of Hakone (near Ninomiya) were mere model train set mountains, and the ones surrounding Kamakura read like braille. Fortunately Kagiyama brought along oxygen tablets and I brought 10 liters of compressed oxygen. Still, both of us suffered altitude sickness. Fortunately, I didn't throw up, but I developed a pretty strong headache and found it difficult to breathe even with the oxygen supply. At about 11,000 feet, I turned to Kagiyama and noticed his face looked as green as Kazoo's (the character on the Flintstones). Kagiyama-kun vomited twice and fortunately I had packed enough trail mix to help him out with much needed calories after he emptied the contents of his stomach. There is no water sources on Mt. Fuji except some patches of ice. To stay hydrated, climbers must bring no less than 2 liters of water. I brought 4 and drank 3 liters on my accent, 1 liter on the descent! All said and done, it was the hardest 1 day of my life, or at least in recent memory. Mt Fuji: beautiful but brutal. There's a old Japanese proverb that translates to, "you're wise to climb Mt. Fuji once, a fool to climb it twice." I think I'll take that proverb to heart, or at least until Kai and Hana say, "Pops, let's climb Fuji," at which time I will have forgotten the pain and naively agree, again. Hope I remember to pack my gravestone. (In fact, I saw more than one grave on the mountain, sadly.)

Well, this letter is starting to read more like an Outdoor magazine article than a letter. I think I'll give our eyes a break, both yours and mine. Attached are lots of long-overdue pictures, each one maybe showing a metamorphoses of smiles as Kai and Hana seem to loose teeth faster than I did braincells on Mt. Fuji.

Take good care, and do email or Skype us sometimes. It would be so nice to hear from you. Love to all.

Mike & family

PS: Mom's birthday is fast approaching, maybe a Skype conference call is in order?