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My favorite city (so far) — Nagano

Of the various cities we visited during week 2, Nagano was my favorite. It is one of the top two places we want to go back to the next time we come to Japan. (We haven’t finished our summer here and already we are planning our return! The other place we want to come back to are the Kerama Islands, these remote, teeny islands off Okinawa, which will be the subject of another post)

Nagano was the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics, but it has a total Japanese vibe today. There is some English, but it is not as pronounced as other cities, so there are various parts of Nagano that feel much more Japanese and less cosmopolitan than other cities.

Of course, since this is Japan, we love it almost anywhere and there were lovely other cities and train rides in the west coast/Alps regions, including a scenic coastal train ride, and a nice couple of days in Kanazawa, but I still liked Nagano a lot more.

Pocket parks along the main drag. Really wide sidewalks. A gorgeous temple.

Nice city surrounded by alpine mountains, with great views even from the local bus stop.

We also found a couple of places for the kids to hang out with other kids as well.

Nagano is known for lots of snow, rain and cold and I do recognize that we had one of the 50 days or so a year of sunshine, but I enjoyed Nagano even with the variable weather. It had various layers/facets to it. Besides the parks, views, temples and Japanese vibe, it had some unexpected finds as well. Like a quirky restaurant/bar with like a zillion clocks on the walls that kept the girls entertained while we had some pub food.

On our way to this clock pub (named Indian Spice) we also found a precious, and quite upscale, liquor store that carried this excellent, yet heretofore only found at Total Wine in Pasadena, tequila:

Yes, indeed, we really liked Nagano. We plan to return here and stay longer than 3 days in a future trip. Nagano was also our first of a few nights in traditional Japanese hotel room, a Ryokan, which the girls at first found very odd, but got used to sleeping on the ground on tatami pretty quickly.

Nagano was a definite winner!

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Japan musings (beverages)

I don’t really drink caffeine. Unless I have a super early morning meeting, I don’t need it — and I spend a lot of my life making sure meetings start later than early morning. I am very sensitive to it and one serving of caffeine, even before noon, has the potential to keep me up all night. I love diet soda, so I drink a lot of “diet caffeine-free anything.” In the U.S. that is easy. In Japan, this is very, very hard. Besides plain water or alcohol, there are mostly two options for beverages — sugar or caffeine. They have lots of variations of sugar milk tea, sugar coffee milk, sugar soda, and an obligatory Coke Zero (which is “diet” but has caffeine). But not much in the sugar free, caffeine free group.

With one notable exception — Asahi Zero.

It is beer, without calories and without alcohol. It tastes just like beer. And fits into my “diet caffeine-free anything” category. It is also fairly ubiquitous. Every time I order it in Japan, someone always wants to make sure I know it has no alcohol. I tell them I do. They look at my oddly. Like why would anyone order this. They don’t realize I am desperate for bubbles that has no caffeine, no sugar and tastes like something besides water. But I wonder, given their reaction, who does order this in Japan? Me and Japanese recovering alcoholics?

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Japan, week 2

After a week at Tokyo Disney Resort (a luxury since in prior trips we are usually trying to squeeze in 2-3 Disney days in a 10-day visit to the whole country), we set out for the west coast of Japan to visit Kanazawa, Niigata and Nagano. We have never been to these cities before. In our prior trips, we have traveled the well worn paths of Tokyo => Kyoto => Osaka => Hiroshima (and places around there such as Nara, Miyajima, Matsuyama etc), so this trip, with weeks at our disposal, we are hitting areas that we cannot get to in a “normal” trip to Japan and areas we have never visited in six trips.

For week 2, we used our first of two Japan rail 7-day passes. The J-rail pass is a deal. For basically the cost of one ticket from Tokyo to Kyoto, you can travel all over the country for 7 days on unlimited trains (plus the ferry to Miyajima off Hiroshima). We do not drive in Japan (being illiterate makes that sort of dangerous, I feel), but the trains are so frequent, organized and take you almost anywhere you would want to go, that it does not require any Japanese to navigate.

Our first stop out of Tokyo was Kanazawa. We took the bullet train there.

We also were there June 1, which coincidentally was part of the annual festival to celebrate when a Japanese leader in the 1500s made his way to the local castle for the first time. As soon as we exited the train, we saw lots of people in costumes. Including the obligatory Japanese warriors, who were so friendly and kind and immediately began sword fighting with the girls and then posed for photos.

There was an awesome parade for a couple of hours right outside the train station,

We also were there the same day that one of my closest friends from high school, a professor of Japanese literature at Emory University, was visiting there, and so we were able to meet up with her as well.

My high school friend Julia with us at the Kanazawa famous outdoor gardens

After the parade, there was a street party. It was really something else and hard to describe. Basically the entire parade was out on the street dancing for blocks. Same dance, same music for probably a mile.

There was the amazing castle

All told, a very fun start to Japan, week 2.

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Journey to Japan (First Stop, Disney)

Our Hawaiian Airlines flight to Haneda

This is our third time to Japan as a family. (Jem and I have been here six times, including our Honeymoon, Babymoon, and a random Lil’s 43rd Birthday Trip in 2013.) We were most recently here 6 months ago in November 2018, with Grandma Rise and Papa. Of course we had a stop at Disney then as well.

We do not speak Japanese beyond a few essential words and phrases (we are trying to improve on that!), but we just enjoy the country so much. Friendly. Organized. Clean. Everything works the way it is supposed to. That just makes the country instantly relaxing. The trains will run on time, the bus will be where you need it to be. And most basic things are in English and most people speak basic English, or are graciously willing to work with our gesturing and pointing and abundant thank you’s, so we get by.

Last year when we were here in November 2018 neither Jem nor I wanted to go back home. We said to each other “if we were different people we just wouldn’t get on that plane home.” Of course we did get on the plane (no doubt to the great pleasure of Japan’s immigration authorities! [-Jem]) but a couple of months later when the opportunity to come to Japan for the summer came up we jumped at the chance. That said, there are of course sacrifices that come along with such a choice, like leaving my job of 10 years and moving back into private practice.

Still, this seemed like a perfect way to mark a major life change. After all, we love Japan! And, as anyone who knows us will quickly guess, our first stop in Japan would inevitably be Disney amazing park(s) there!

But there is a lot more to Japan than just Disney. Here is an example of what I love about Japan. Even the dogs are clean, organized and treated with respect.

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I Quit My Job and Moved To…Version 2.0

Approximately 12 years ago, I hit a career wall and decided to quit my job and move to Hawaii. I chose the Big Island because it was remote, rural and the opposite of living in the big city like Los Angeles. I was going to chuck in the practice of law and open a coffee shop. Maybe. Or run a coffee cart. Or, I was just going to snorkel and swim with whales and dolphins and stare at the ocean.

I did most of that. The moving to Hawaii, swimming with whales and dolphins and staring at the ocean part at least — never did get to the coffee shop and coffee cart. Within a couple of months of moving to Hawaii, I realized that the practice of law was not something I was ready to chuck in, I was mostly burned out and needed a break, and that primarily it was just where I had been practicing that was the problem. I sat for the Hawaii bar and became a Hawaii licensed attorney as well as a California one. A couple of clients kept hiring me for projects from Hawaii. It was great. I spent two years working from wherever, part-time, including a memorable trip to Central America with my high school friend Paige who was writing for Lonely Planet at the time. My law practice was wherever my cell phone and laptop were. I was newly single and traveling around the world.

About two years into this semi-retirement, an opportunity of a career opened up and I was offered an in-house position at USC that I could not turn down. My close friend and mentor who was working at USC said she could really use my skills and needed me and that sealed the deal. But I knew my wings were getting clipped. The job was full-time, which was not ideal, in so far as I wasn’t quite ready to leave semi-retirement, and I knew that I would eventually chafe and need another break from the full-time, work-in-one-country job. I never thought it would last 10 years, but it did! An amazing 10-year run, but last year I started hitting that wall. I was burning out again. I could feel it. This February, I was ill for a few weeks and knew that for my mental and physical health, it was time to reprise the semi-retirement. But this time, instead of quitting my job and moving to Hawaii…I quit my job and moved to Japan! Just for the summer. Of course, as you already know, we stopped in Hawaii first for the birthday celebration of our friends Len and Sue, Hawaii 5-0. For version 2.0 of quitting my job and moving further west (“go west, burned out lawyer”) I had the great fortune of having an adventurous husband and kids along for the family — Axelrod — adventures. These adventures you are reading about now.

First stop out of the U.S, our happiest place on earth, Tokyo DisneySea!

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Official First Post: Welcome Readers

So, now that I have figured out how this blog thing works, I can officially do our first post. Which is technically our third post. Oh well, things never work out quite how you plan.

As I will explain in some subsequent post in more detail, I have given notice at my 9-5 fixed job and am making a job change. Among other things, I am becoming a homeschool second/third grade teacher for the summer.  We pulled the girls out of school and are finishing up second grade and starting parts of third grade on the road abroad. “World School” is the technical term.

We hope to be doing lots of traveling as a family and doing short bursts of “road schooling” or “world-schooling” and then sending the girls back into their classroom.  Luckily, we are in a private school and thus do not need to go through the Robocalls and/or requests for independent study process — and we will not be reported to Child Welfare as “truants.” We will just teach on the road, and let the girls engage in some self-directed learning.  We will be using this blog to catalog where we go, and how the world schooling project is going. The girls will do blog posts for homework as well and will love to get feedback.

So, officially, welcome to our blog about travel, world-schooling and …. Axelrod adventures!

We left California last week.  Our first stop is Oahu, Hawaii because it is….party time!

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We’re learning!

As we are T minus 7 days for our departure from California, first to Hawaii and then to Japan for the summer, we are learning a lot about how to prepare to be nomads for two months. So far, we are full of new lessons and adventures. To start with, Lil is learning how to write and edit a blog. This one. I am not sure how it is going, in so far as this is Lil’s blog post, but I think I am logged in as Jem. Confusing. Also, I am trying to learn a little Japanese. It is hard to learn a new language at age 48. My retention is close to nil. Thanks to Duolingo, I think I can say “vegetables” and “alcohol.” I don’t know why it chose to teach me those two words first. I would have thought “bathroom” and “where is” would be much more useful.

Lil and Jem are learning how to pack for a multi-month adventure within the 50 pound per suitcase limit. Normally, we take 50 pounds per suitcase for a week. Each. And a third suitcase, also 50 pounds, for the girls. Now we are going for many more weeks than that, and to climates cold and boiling hot, so we need a little bit of every kind of clothing. Learning to pack for many weeks under those constraints is a challenge.

Lil is learning how to travel with less than 5 pairs of shoes. I am down to 4. I don’t see how I do less, in so far as I need 1 nice pair, 1 closed toe pair and then flip flops. Since I love my flip flops, I am wearing 1 pair and taking a backup. So, that may be where I can reduce my shoes down by one more pair. No backup flip flops. But no way I can take less than 3 pairs.

Amalia and Sophie will have to learn how to travel with no stuffed animals (more realistically, since they take about 5 each, I am going to try and limit them to 1-2 each). I really want them to take no stuffed animals or toys because one of our first stops will be Tokyo DisneySea. Whatever room will be in our suitcase when we leave California will be gone by the end of that week — filled with Disney and Mickey T-shirts and toys.

Now I have to learn how to publish a blog post. (If you are reading this, then I think I can say success!)