By Adam Brownstein
Seven hours into our week-long family summer vacation, we found ourselves in the Emergency Room awaiting the doctor’s assessment.
The over/under for an ER visit was three days, casting a disparaging light on odds makers everywhere. Sitting in the waiting area of Karuizawa Hospital, I found myself cursing my election to take the over (how naive!), while consoling my brave and foolish two-year-old son. Yuyu, as he is known in the parlance of our household, was nursing a second degree burn to his right middle finger, taking labored breaths. As I rocked him back and forth my wife and I exchanged a knowing glance that loosely translated to, “Despite the dire straits of our current situation and the seven days (and nights of rain) ahead, we are going to make the most of our hard-won holiday. There will be no turning back to Tokyo. There will be no surrender. Stand fast.” 16 years of marriage builds, amongst other skills, mental telepathy, which comes in handy when you’re trying to keep it down in the hospital waiting area.
Too tired and pained to eat out at a restaurant and too cheap to opt for the Karuizawa Prince prix fixe menu, our family of five made a hurried pilgrimage to Lawson Station. Within 180 seconds we had secured an array of bentos, karaage, consomme chips and sweats along with glass bottles of Ramune pops and tallboys of Asahi. Provisions in hand and spirits still ebbing, we retreated to our hotel room to feast and sulk.
This was, of course, the same hotel room where, only hours ago, Yuyu had reached with winsome curiosity to touch a light bulb. Ironically, it happened while I was focusing my attention on Yuyu’s older brother, Ari. A robust eight-year-old and consummate middle child, Ari was sharing valuable, constructive feedback on how I seemed to lavish unwarranted attention on his younger brother. My focus squarely fixed on Ari, I failed to see young Yuyu reaching for the hot, soft glow.
As my brood tucked in around the modest bedside stand that served as our dining table, I glanced at the weather app on my phone. Rain, followed by more rain followed by thunderstorms and “further ADVISORY” (I am not kidding. All CAPS). These dire straits proved no match for my fabled wellspring of optimism. Things would get better, I concluded, the comforting taste of Lawson Station pickled cucumbers filling me with Hope.
Our vacation was intended to be a week in the woods, free from the digital shackles and junk foods of the daily grind. We would observe beetles, play rounds of chess and splash about in babbling brooks. We would take the time to be present with one another and to reflect about the life stages of our children. Our empathetic, self-assured pre-teen daughter. Our curious, soccer-crazed 8-year-old son. Our precocious, cheerful two-year old son. Along with my courageous wife, these would be the cast of characters in our great venture into meaning. A journey that would be valuable, perfect, organic and sustainable. We would be the family in the canoe on the cover of the LL Bean catalogue, except we would be freckled-faced Jewish Asians, not Mayflower descendants.
Mother Nature and a singed extremity had thrown a spanner into the works, and that did something that we did not expect. It liberated us from our vision of paddling the canoe on Lake Wanawanabee. Our vacation was now a minor fiasco, and with it came new rules of engagement duly noted in the Family Vacation Fiasco Emergency Handbook.
We had already deployed Rule #1 (When farm-to-table kale is absent, substitute with konbini cuisine).
Rule #2 – Look to the Mall
The morning after the burn, the rain did not abate, but swept across Eastern Japan with the fury of Hagler v. Hearns. So we resolved to do what millions do when you cannot take a walk in the woods . . . take a walk in the Mall! Empowered by the Rules of Fiasco, I reconciled that my disdain for shopping malls could be transformed into an exercise in gratitude. Grateful for my lack of desire to purchase another Adidas sports kit. Grateful for driving a beat-up, five-year-old Q3 amidst the gosh AMGs. And, most notably, grateful for the outstanding people watching opportunities that can only be enjoyed in a place of reckless conspicuous consumption.
Bear in mind that this was no ordinary mall, but the acclaimed Karuizawa Prince Shopping Centre! Home to over 300 hundred mildly luxurious shops, cafes and restaurants, the mall was a place of legend amidst the quasi-fashionable set of East Japan.
To capitalize on our people watching mission, our family divided into two recon squadrons and rapidly fanned across the vast forward theater of operation. Steeled by our sense of epic adventure, my two sons and I set up a position at Starbucks where we could easily cast an eye on the parking lot. There we sipped . . . waited . . . and watched.
It took less than five minutes for us to spot the first of many exotic specimens in this new Wild Kingdom. Emerging in the rain from a chromed-out white Hummer (I had thought that production of these vehicles had stopped during the first Obama Administration), stood a middle-aged man clad in carrot-cut white linen slacks, a pink Polo shirt and faux-gold rose-tinted aviators. The dandy’s Polo shirt had the collar conscientiously turned up, an oversized navy blue horse-and-rider logo stitched on the front. Nuzzled under his white fedora (from the second Obama Administration) were gazzy wisps of hair that had been expertly dyed in tiger-tale orange.
“That man looks like an oji-san had a baby with an ice cream truck driver,” noted Ari as he cooled sipped on a mango slushy.
But the man was not the Hummer’s only passenger. With the coast clear from the parking lot to the Tory Burch store, the middle aged ice cream baby opened the passenger side door. Out of the door appeared a slender woman adorned in golden Mary Janes, peach capris pants and a magenta cardigan. Her hair was long, stiff and tinged with the same tiger tale highlights as her mate. From our safe perch at Starbucks it was difficult to discern her biological age. Botox or a regimen of face strengthening exercises or a hybrid of both had placed her into a kind of ageless dimension
The woman did not have a fedora, but she did have a latte brown tee-cup poodle tucked into her left arm. Like the other two members of its pack, the poodle sniffed the rain air with a certain gaudy evereverence.
“Su-GOI!” screamed Yuyu, his face issuing the first trademarked cherubic smile since his accident. “Sugoi” is a very fantastic Japanese word that loosely translates to “amazing!”. Despite his youth and his wounds, Yuyu had nailed its use on one of his very first attempts.
Rule #3: Make hay (and pick blueberries) when the sun shines
As much as we savored the malls, shi-shi shoppers and crowded roads of Karuizawa, our holiday plans called for us to press northward. Amidst another massive rain storm and packed like sardines amidst all of the outdoor gear we couldn’t use because of the rain (oh, the irony) we headed deeper into Nagano Prefecture.
Our second stop was the Hakuba Valley, beloved by Sydney Siders for its epic winter skiing and adored by our family as a favorite adventure spot for many years. After a smooth two-hour ride filled with BTS Essentials, 20 Questions and naps, we arrived in Hakuba in the early afternoon. Like magic, our entrance into the valley was met with sunny blue skies that we relished, not taking a moment for granted. After a hasty unloading of our particulars, our famished brood made haste to the Noh Farmers Cafe just down the road from our cabin.
As we tucked in for a late lunch and cast an eye at the menu, I realized that it would be here over a feast of fresh okura tempura, steaming hot miso soup and hand-cut soba noodles, that the turning of the tide of our holiday was about to ensue. Having ingested a shameful
amount of conbini cuisine during the bruising first two days of our campaign, these simple farm-to-table dishes hit all of the right notes.
With a last gulp of cold mugi-cha to slake our thirst, we ventured out from the cafe to the expansive blueberry orchard owned and operated by the same restaurateur family. A simple pale in hand to harvest high-bush, low-bush and rabbiteye blueberries (who knew! so many types!), two Gessaney goats sureenly welcomed us to their home. The nice thing about an encounter with a mild-mannered farm animal is that it engenders a peaceful, easy feeling to all, clever pre-teen daughters and middle-aged schlub dads alike.
Megumu, the kids and I waded into the labyrinth of blueberry trees and emerged with our pale filled with fruit and our spirits chuffed. The trip WAS getting better!
Rule #4: It is far better to make fun of a dorky dad than to throw scorn upon him
Early in our marriage, my wife scolded me about my inability to perform basic outdoor chores around our modest Seattle craftsman home. My pleas of being an apartment-dwelling city mouse for my entire adult life were offered no succor. So one spring day I proceeded to Home Depot to purchase a lawn mower. The kindly sales clerk in the orange apron assured me that the model I had selected was not only a great price but also idiot proof.
After an hour of toiling in the backyard to get the machine started I called Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, home of the Bridges & Stratton Company. The nice women in customer support inquired what kind of gas I had put into the fuel tank. It was at that moment that I realized the motor oil that came with the mower was different from gasoline.
“Has anyone ever made this mistake,” I sheepishly inquired. “Not knowing the difference between motor oil and gasoline?”
“It happens,” she responded in plain spoken Mid-Western parlance. “Not very often, but it happens.”
The Great Lawn Mower Incident of 2007 convinced my wife to encourage me with future domestic endeavors. Not in the way that a patriot roots for a Blue Angels pilot, but rather like the doting owner of a puppy who is house trained for the first time. “You can DO it! Good boy!” She also developed a “trust but verify” protocol with me the way that nation states like to do with nuclear weapon inspections.
So when I ran into the cabin giddy with excitement at the discovery of a Weber grill outside, my wife played the situation like a Strativarius.
“Wow, Honey! That’s great! You must be SO excited to grill!” she offered. “The kids will be hungry for an early dinner, so JUST leave yourself plenty of time to build the fire. I’m SURE it will be delicious!”
My wife generously afforded me 45 minutes to get the fire rolling (most skilled grillmen can do it in 20). Casting an eye at me on the lawn with only faint wisps of smoke emanating from the Weber One-Touch she dispatched her father to serve as my deputy. Blessed with a similar inability to be handy, my father-in-law relished our time together over chilly bottles of Hakuba Ale. He fanned the fire to mild effect, and we commenced grilling supper for the family. I really felt the heat (hah hah!) with the arrival of my mother-in-law, filling me with a fresh sense of purpose and urgency.
Our 5:30 sunset bon-vivant meal had morphed into a 7:15 pm rainy barbeque. The yaki onigiri lacked the favored crunchiness due to the low flame, but our dinner party lacked for nothing in the way of good cheer. As we savored the slightly undercooked cuisine, each of our three children performed their best line dance solo in the rain.
“Another great BBQ in the books!” I nodded with a degree of self-satisfaction.
“Great indeed, Honey!” my wife proclaimed. “And right on time!”
Rule #5: Things look better from the top
Our penn-ultimate day in Nagano found us in search of an alpine adventure, so we made the pilgrimage to the border of Toyama Prefecture to experience the Kurobe Dam. Erected between 1956-1962, Japan’s largest dam serves as a nostalgic nod to the great progress the country made after World War II. Perched at over 2,500 meters in the heart of Japan’s Northern Alps, it is a stunning example of engineering and determination as well as an excellent place to enjoy high altitude soft-serve ice cream.
Accessing the best views of Kurobe Dam and the surrounding mountains requires a measure of persistence. After a pleasant 45 minute drive from Hakuba, we boarded an electric bus that serpentined through the cavernous bowels of Mount Tateyama. Next, we glided 1.7 kilometers through the mountainous mist aboard the Tateyama Ropeway, the longest single cable ropeway in Asia. Finally, we ascended up to the 3,300 meter peak riding on the Kurobe Funicular.
After alighting from the cable car, we savored a quick lunch of steamed buns en route to the tranquil viewing garden. Despite the crush of domestic tourists at the Dam that day, we found the garden nearly all to ourselves. I felt like an extra in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, only the lamasary had been replaced by a tacky mountaintop gift shop.
As luck would have it, the rain that had stalked us through most of our ascent stopped. Blue skies in hand and all five of us in good spirits, we were able to obtain a moment of peace and happiness as a family. Emma opportunistically suggested that we capture it in a family selfie, and the end result was surprisingly presentable. I am sure it is the lead candidate for the cover photo of the 2021 Kimoto-Brownstein Chanukah Card.
Epilogue – The silver lining of fiascos
The last day of our holiday brought clear skies and a pilgrimage to the Snow Peak Landstation back in Hakuba. Designed by the venerable architect, Kuma Kengo, the landstation features a cedar-framed farm-to-table restaurant, spendy camping gear and an expansive lawn. After a lunch of local pickles, hearty purple rice and fatty salmon, our family retired to the lawn to breath in the fresh mountain air before returning to the great ant colony that is Tokyo.
Resting in Snow Peak camping chairs, sipping coffee, Megumu and I reflected on our time as a family in the mountains. Yes, the trip had started off in the nefarious realm of fiasco, but that had united our brood in ways we had not anticipated. We DID connect with each other! We DID celebrate the wonder and mishogas of the life stages of our children. It was, after a fashion, the family vacation we had dreamed of all along.
With that, I stood up, stretched my short arms over my short frame and walked across the lawn to get a better view of the kids. Emma, a devotee of rhythmic gymnastics, was providing a free cart-wheel lesson to Ari. Their giggles and gyrations hypnotized me into a moment of fatherly nachas.
Just in that instant, Yuyu rushed right up to me while his larger siblings frolicked nearby. Looking up and looking into my eyes, I sensed he was about to say “tank tu, Daddy” for a wonderful trip. Little did I realize that his cherubic grin masked sinister intentions. His smile distracting me, Yuyu landed a brutal sucker punch below my belt. As I keeled over in temporary pain I savored the irony that my two-year-old son had slugged me with the same hand he burned at the onset of our adventure.
Our trip had come (cheekily) full circle.
The Tokyo Yenta 