The last few months have been packed with travel. Our first big trip of the winter season was Japan. We prepped for weeks since we didn't have much cold weather clothing and this was to be our first ski trip ever. We ordered two small ski suits and sweet-talked a Taiwan-bound US colleague into shoving them in his suitcases. But for the bulk of the gear, I tapped the Tai Tai network to beg, steal and borrow. My Kiwi friend Nicky leant out two giant Costco bags of jackets, ski pants, gloves, socks and warm base layers. Now, while Nicky would probably say the most precious item she bestowed was her lovely, toasty, trendy ski jacket, I know that in her heart, her grandpa's wool socks and grandma's long underwear were actually the most sacred. And I swear I treated them with all the reverence they deserved and felt warm and fuzzy every time I wore them!
We began our Japan trip with one week visiting Tokyo, Kyoto and Nagoya, and then headed to Nagano for a week of snow skiing at the site of the '98 Winter Olympics. Ah, Kyoto! What amazed me was seeing how the flamboyant Chinese-style architecture we've been used to--and is still evident in some of the Kyoto sites --had morphed into the more somber structures of Japan's temples and palaces. I snapped endless pictures of wood, stone and iron, and I loved the way dark rooflines looked against the cold blue sky. We got there just in time to see the last of the fall leaves, too, and I realized how long it's been since I've breathed in the damp, leafy smell of autumn. Wandering through Gion, the geisha district, plunged me back into the pages of Memoirs of a Geisha, and seeing the Golden Pavillion at Kinkakuji took my breath away. Below: Grounds at old Imperial Palace, grounds at Ryoanji zen temple complex, Nanzenji zen temple, apprentice geisha in Gion, Kinkakuji (Golden Pavillion) 
Nagano was cold, snowy goodness! We were blessed with heavy powder by night, and sunshine on the slopes by day.The kids fell in love with the snow and were champs on the ski slopes. McLeod, ever the natural athlete, went from novice to pretty good in no time. I've blocked out some of the less pleasant moments of me actually trying to ski. I have a blurred memory of saying, "Hey, this isn't so bad!" while on the near-flat training area, followed by a painfully embarrassing series of falls from the moment I exited the lift chair and begin attempting S-turns. Wait, sorry, I think that was some other girl in borrowed woolen socks. I was the rosy-cheeked lady happily snapping pictures of husband and children on the slopes and learning that if you lock eyes with a novice snowboarder, she will come sliding right 
toward you at increasing speed, apologizing profusely in Japanese and desperately trying to turn away. She will finally wipe out in a snow bank at the last minute and you will pretend you didn't notice. Evenings were bliss in the onsen, the traditional Japanese bath which includes first completely cleansing in the shower area, then dipping into the steamy waters for a long soak. After her first trip to the ladies onsen with me, Caroline had me send a note to her grandmother that read: We just went to the hot tub. We were NAKED. And I LOVED it! McLeod and Barret's onsen experience was a little different - while C and I pretty much had the place to ourselves other than one or two quiet Japanese ladies, the men's side was overrun with mohawk-sporting, snowboard zealots from the Western hemisphere. Every third word was "Dude!" while every other word was an obscenity. McLeod kept Barret engaged in a loud, lively conversation about his day at ski school to mask the Dude-talk on the other side of the hot pool. But what McLeod missed in relaxation at the onsen, he found fireside in the lobby where Joe, the clerk-waiter-driver-handyman-doorman (and son of the owners) turned out to also be the bartender. He produced some glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniels and said, "You pour. All same price." So, toasty inside and out, we'd deal with the mounds of wet things, prep gear for the next day, conk out in our row of small beds and wake up to do it all over again. Below: The view from the top, courtesy of John Heinemann, videos of the kids
