Japanese guidelines for omiyage are complex. While it’s clear to a Japanese person how much should be spent on a gift or what is appropriate in a given situation and relationship, that’s rarely clear to the NJ. No NJ wants to learn that a gift wasn’t quite correct after the fact.

In addition, there’s no NJ equivalent for regional crackers or bean cakes that can be grabbed—already wrapped—at the airport or train stations as Japanese people do. After 2001, if NJ omiyage are exquisitely wrapped (as they are supposed to be) they could be torn apart by a dutiful customs official. That adds the necessity of carrying gift wrap along as well.

More importantly, omiyage take up space and add weight.  Since I carry only one carry-on suitcase with a 10 kilogram limit, finding gifts that are value-appropriate, flat, light and Canadian without being kitsch or cliché is a particular challenge. Though everything always fits into my case, it seldom meets weight restrictions.

One solution I’ve come up with is to courier the omiyage and wrapping materials to my destination ahead of my arrival. A bit pricey, but that works just fine if the courier prints the address correctly. (Insist on proof-reading as a mistake is more headache than having to bring a second suitcase. Trust me on this.)

Dragging my sturdy tote full of gifts to the enkai I’m thrilled to finally unload the lot.  No need to strap that bulk to my suitcase handle during the next leg of my jaunt to Kyoto, Hiroshima and beyond. But I’ve overlooked one thing.

As my friends greet me, they press gifts into my hands. Soon a collection forms around my seat and under the table that looks as if I’m set to open a boutique. By the end of my 5 days in Toyohashi I have received more than twice the omiyage I brought with me.

My dai kichi fortune. I listened to my gut. When I packed I tucked in two sturdy tote bags.

Then they take their places by rank at the long table laid out along one side of the room of the Umizuki inn.

The room in Umizuki, in downtown Toyohashi

Ichikawa-san (who has been doing so since 1998) offers a cucumber to each woman present. This time some of the guys get one, too. A long-standing joke, he reminds us that Japanese cucumber is small, hard and delicious.

Drinks are poured—we all serve each other as it’s done in Japan—and someone offers the first toast: Kampai! To indulgent laughter someone else shouts the second in Italian: Cin cin. Everyone understands and enjoys its association with slang Japanese chin chin. In any language, it seems you always learn the naughty bits first.

For several hours servers ply us with platters of food along with seemingly bottomless bottles of beer and Nihonshu (sake/rice wine). We relax, reconnect and reminisce. Our faces flush with the warmth of the room and rounds of sake.

I’m always amazed at how much alcohol I can put away at an enkai. There’s something about the quality of Japanese food and spirits; one cancels out the negative effects of the other. Or that’s my theory at the end of the night. Mind you, in a culture where someone is always filling your glass, it’s a bit of insurance to leave very little room some of the time.

This is my first private visit to Toyohashi. I was last here officially in 2005. Yamakawa-san has kindly arranged this party to reunite with the colleagues who were my hosts when I stayed in Japan, others who stayed with me in Canada, as well as the various program coordinators with whom I worked to direct the exchange program. What is unusual tonight is that two administrators—the Superintendent of Kozakai and the Principal of Kozakai Junior High school—have asked to join the group. Though I have never met them, they have heard about me and wish to meet me: a singular honour.

Always there are speeches. I’ve rehearsed mine well. For the first time I begin in Japanese (the sort a polite two year-old might speak) before switching to English. To my great surprise, when I finish no one tells me I speak Japanese very well. I was expecting it and had practised the appropriate demurral. Instead, this tacit compliment.

Before the ritual clapping to end the evening, we pause for a group photo.

Friends in Toyohashi November 2010

The final banzai comes too soon. Always too soon. Ten thousand years! Each time I leave my friends, this cheer reverberating in my mind; it feels as if it might be that long before my return.

And so we slowly gather our things. Once outside we linger in a circle. Talking, smoking, shifting one foot to another and shivering slightly in the autumnal night—reluctant, as always, to part.

And though the building remains the same, the reception is missing. No broad smiles behind the exit turnstiles, no waving arms or bows. No bus waiting to jam us in and cart us off. No speeches or formalities to begin home and school life in Japan.

Everyone is still at work. This afternoon I’m free to walk through a downtown I’ve never seen before even though I have disembarked here numerous times since 1998.

This time I will check into hotel life. The Toyoko Inn—a newer one than the digs I had on Kokusai-dori, Tokyo—is still fresh and fully up to modern speed. Touch screen computers in the lobby show me the sites of interest that I might visit during my stay, offer restaurants of all kinds for my choosing and suggest where I might shop.

A great—and inexpensive—Japan-wide chain for the traveller on the move, Toyoko Inn has everything anyone might need: full breakfast with coffee, free internet service and printing in the lobby, Wi-Fi in all rooms, laundry facilities and more. Their website says it all.

On checking in, Manager Kayoko Kumazawa immediately appears at the receptionist’s side. From the back office she’s overheard my greetings in Japanese and has come to assist. In flawless English she welcomes me to Toyoko Inn. Returning my passport, she’s curious. “Why have you come to Toyohashi?”

“To visit friends.”

After a few days of steady traffic in and out of the hotel to pick me up and whisk me away she will ask, “How is it you have so many friends in Toyohashi?”

I’ve been blest. There is nothing in the world quite like returning to dear friends after a long time away. However, my colleagues, after almost 20 years of exchanges between Japan and Canada, are not ordinary friends. They are my Japanese family. In some ineffable way, I’ve come home.

If I am wrong, I have allowed more than enough time to fix a false turn. Unfortunately, this morning that’s also more than enough time to obsess compulsively over a station clock. I can’t see one anywhere.

Yamakawa-san’s voice nags in my mind: How will you catch the right train? The last time I was in Tokyo Station I got lost, and I’m Japanese. Perhaps there’s something about the sheer size and complexity of Tokyo Station and its constantly surging mass of people that breeds this neurosis.

Whatever it is, I’m feeling the fear at Shinkansen speeds. What if I’m waiting for the wrong train? I’ve been riding Tokyo city trains without difficulty all week. Why the sweat now over this one? What’s not right? The track and car numbers (I’ve checked repeatedly) match my ticket.

Without a travelling companion to help me get a grip, I’m at the mercy of the worm in my brain insisting that I need to know the exact time. Really? My mobile is off by two minutes. Isn’t that close enough? No. The worm does not let up. Oh please, where is the damned clock?

About to cave and ask someone, I look back to the departure times overhead. As if newly manifest, there it is. Right between the scrolling schedules where its implacable face has been marking the minutes for decades—that 10:10 looking quite like a giant smirk.

Suddenly everything’s cool. The worm is gone. I am in the right place at the right time, and I can manage a private laugh at my ridiculous state just moments ago. It’s not called blind panic for nothing.

Sake—or Nihonshu as it’s called in Japan—has graduated from a class of wine associated primarily with Japanese food. In the past decade, top international chefs began to use it and kazu (a highly nutritious by-product of the sake making process) in everything from soup, dressings, marinades and reductions to ice cream.

Globally, sommeliers in the finest establishments pair finest Japanese sake with all manner of dishes from appetizers to desserts: blue cheese, foie gras, pate, vegetable terrine, seafood, poultry, red meats, chocolate, and fruit. With attention to harmony and balance in the characteristics of the food and the wine, it’s quite literally a match for anything.

Now it’s happening in Abbotsford. On Sunday, tasters enjoyed a seafood bouillabaisse with kazu broth complemented by Osake Junmai Nama, a clear wine with melon and citrus notes. That was followed with the cloudy and creamy Osake Junmai Nigori paired with a duck confit and cranberry crostini. Finally, beef tenderloin with root vegetable and blue cheese demi-glace rounded out Osake Junmai Genshu and the evening.

Restaurant 62 says this is just the beginning. Chef Jeff Massey, Eric Ferris and Alicia Bodaly plan more sake-tasting events after this one. Read more about how sake is made, Restaurant 62’s visit to Granville Island and their hints of more sake events coming up in Abbotsford.

Masa Shiroki, owner of Granville Island’s Artisan Sake Maker, is planting his second crop of sake-grade rice in Abbotsford this year. Read more about Shiroki in Monte Cristo Magazine

Read more about growing rice in Abbotsford.

Not daunted by the absence of fellow revelers—quite the opposite, in fact—I headed out on Tuesday afternoon. Knowing how soggy it would be after Wednesday’s forecast rain, I threw my jacket on the ground, leaned against a tree and let the world stop for a moment. My good fortune, Mt. Baker appeared–ever so faintly–against the haze to join the show.

During my solo ohanami (cherry blossom viewing) I saw few people other than the city office workers crawling away like ants around 5PM. Most didn’t bother to notice the blossoms on their way out.

I wonder: Could people in Japan imagine a little ohanami alone with almost no one else in the park? Might a Japanese person feel nervous and lonely in such a situation?

I loved it. Heard the jets thrust down as they approached the airport a few miles south, one cranky seagull complained vociferously, traffic thrummed and petals sighed as they slipped lightly through the air.

The Prisoner of Snowflake Falls is a book rich with simple complexities and deadpan one-liners that brilliant comics will wish they had written.

John Lekich, author of King of the Lost and Found and The Losers’ Club brings us another in what might now be qualified as a streak of young adult fiction featuring exceptional adolescents.  Though each has much to offer the world, none quite fits in. That’s exactly what motivates them and the essence of their charm.

Readers who love this book will be ones who love the suspense of a stakeout. Anything might happen. Or ones charmed by a good kid gone just a little bit wrong, a kid who gets arrested for baking cookies. (Without giving away spoilers, you can get arrested for that. Henry Thelonious Holloway did.)

This is fiction that I wish were targeted to adults. Not because the book might tempt youth to glamorize crime or emulate Holloway, but because it takes certain experience and perspective to fully appreciate its deeper meaning and elegant writing. Lekich is a writer’s writer. No question. That just might escape a younger reader’s notice. Then again, there isn’t a kid alive who doesn’t know sorrow, loneliness or defeat of some kind.

Holloway, the book’s central character is an orphaned juvenile who lives alone in a tree house. He has several identities as well as a long list of residential break and enters and auto thefts to his credit. However, Holloway is no angry, amoral anarchist.

Using his ill-got gains to outfit his tree house, eat, and survive without adult care, Holloway also cultivates his interest in the “finer things of life.” While his mother was alive she was “a big believer in savoring life’s more elegant moments.” When Holloway gets unbearably lonely for her he attends an opera, a concert or visits a gallery to be “just a little closer to her spirit.”

The lazy but brilliant Holloway figures, “If I’m going to do anything that involves actual effort, I want it to be my own decision.” Though he qualifies for a prestigious school on scholarship, Holloway sees through the opportunity and the future it promises as little more than “prison with neckties.”

Without parents, Holloway is disadvantaged by his isolation, his socio-economic class, and his Uncle Andy whose unsavory associates school him in crime. As the book progresses, life is complicated by a sequence of unfortunate turns. As Uncle Andy observes, “Bad luck has put more clever crooks in jail faster than you can say: ‘Do you hear sirens?’”

From experience Holloway understands that “…life is the biggest con artist of them all.” And sure as not, “…fate will hand you a surprise that is virtually guaranteed to knock you on your butt.” However, Holloway also has multiple gifts including “a natural ability for solving honest problems in a totally dishonest way.”

That said, Holloway always acts with honour. He does not steal too much. He appreciates that he is a guest in someone else’s home and leaves the place like a campsite—a little better than when he found it (minus a bit of food or cash, of course). On one occasion, when he realizes what it is for, Holloway adds money to the sum of cash he finds in a drawer. He rationalizes, “Most of it was money I stole from other places…. I wasn’t returning it or anything. I was just sort of recycling it.”

As the judge on his case observes, “You know, for someone so schooled in dishonesty, you can be refreshingly straightforward.”

When Holloway is sentenced to the island community of Snowflake Falls to serve his time with the Wingate family as part of a special Second Chance Program, he thinks he might enjoy a little peaceful boredom for a change.

However, the chronic loner is thrust into family life that sometimes feels more like vengeance. Not only that, Holloway has to take on two part-time jobs and try to reform. But Snowflake Falls proves to be a wackily redemptive place. Even Uncle Andy, when he shows up with his criminal coterie notices. “Good citizenship is spreading among my associates like some sort of terrible disease.”

The Prisoner of Snowflake Falls reverberates with the genuine, essential stuff. Stuff that (unlike all that’s mean and wrong with the world) never makes the evening news. Profound meaning can be found in the smallest gesture. Echoes of the ages resound in the philosophical, social and moral ideas.

Every character is flawed but inherently noble. Every life is circumscribed, in some way imprisoned within the dilemmas that shape daily existence. Every choice is a choice of conscience. Every option has a price. Every action says something about who a person is: someone who “needs the right excuse to do the wrong thing” or someone who must “make all sorts of humiliating sacrifices” to do what’s right.

Torii (gate) and dankazua (raised pathway flanked in cherry trees)

To our surprise a marriage ceremony is under way in the Maiden, or open pavilion in front of the shrine where performances of various kinds and weddings are held.

Along with others who have gathered to watch, we witness the exchange of rings, the family vows and sake ceremony that are part of a traditional Shinto wedding.

A traditional offering of tamagushi (sacred branches)

Later, after viewing the main shrine and drawing our fortunes—I get daikichi or great good luck—we see the young couple about to ride off in a rickshaw. They look so rich and smart and pleased with themselves in their wedding finery. They’re young and beautiful. Now she can’t be called kurisumasu keki (left-over Christmas cake, stale and not wanted after 25).

Alas, often marriage, too, goes quickly stale. I wish them great good luck.

The happy newly weds.

Just married.

It’s nearing closing time as my Tokyo-based friend Aki—who kindly spent the day guiding me around Kamakura—and I make our approach. The crowd thins out, the sun slinks behind the hills throwing long shadows, and light-slivers dance on the susuki.

How very odd. A startling paradox: How small he seems. The writer who suggested travelers should skip the customary tour of attractions because all look as they do in books is wrong. The cropping and camera angles in photos fail to convey him as I first perceive him—dwarfed by the modest Kamakura landscape, trumped hands down by the unassuming backdrop of an ordinary hill.

The Great Buddha of Kamakura

Of course, as I draw closer he looms larger with every step. And don’t get me wrong, as the second in size only to the Buddha at Todaiji in Nara, these 93 tons of 13th century cast bronze are impressive.

That first impression is no disappointment, merely a heightened awareness of something more in a perception that first registers as less. There are different ways to be awestruck.

Also, mythically and metaphorically the wolf haunts the human psyche like few other animals for all kinds of complicated reasons. In Lone Wolf that’s coupled with the on-trend inclination to anthropomorphise animals.

I suspect, too, the notion of a man living wild with wolves is likely fresh for the American public. Canadians, however, might recall  Never Cry Wolf, Farley Mowat’s “genuine experience” of living with wolves in the wild and read with some misgivings.